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Green housing advocates are celebrating the end of plans to lower insulation standards.
Green Building Council head Andrew Eagles said the decision to save the standards meant 30,000 additional whānau would be in healthier, warmer homes each year.
RNZ revealed last year that building and construction minister Chris Penk wanted to roll back insulation standards that saved a new home an estimated 40 percent on heating.
Some builders had told Penk the new standards had forced up insulation costs by $40,000-$50,000 but he later acknowledged independent advice did not back that up.
The Ministry for Business Innovation and Employment has announced there will be no roll back of the standards, however it is removing one of the options for meeting the standards, a "blunt tool" called the schedule method that was adding between $2000 and $15,000 per new home build.
Builders will now have to calculate the total effect of windows and other design choices on insulation across the whole home and will no longer have the option of meeting the standards by selecting items individually from an approved list.
Insulation had also been blamed for overheating, but research again showed that was incorrect.
Eagles said Penk should be congratulated for listening to the science.
"I'm really proud to say that Certified Builders, Construction Industry Council, ADNZ (Architectural Designers New Zealand), BRANZ (Building Research Association of New Zealand) and others stepped in and said, no you should not be taking out insulation, and it's bad design that is to blame not insulation for overheating," he said.
"It's overglazing, lack of shading and other issues are causing that.
"Those insulation levels will stay, and the schedule method is gone.
"It (the schedule method) meant that many were using more expensive products than they needed to," Eagles said.
